


Skeletons of Cities

by Masu_Trout



Category: Fallout 3
Genre: And Also Explosions, Gen, Introspection, Super Mutants, Treat, Vault 101, Wasteland Exploration, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-15 21:37:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8073565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: The Capital Wasteland is filthy, irradiated, and full of super mutants, but it's starting to feel like home.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AceQueenKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/gifts).



> I had a really good time writing this, and I hope you enjoy it!

It's just past noon and the sun hangs high in the sky. Light reflects off the riverbank and the broken spires of glass and steel alike, sending up a bright glare.

It is, she's pretty sure, the only reason she's alive right now.

The Lone Wanderer ducks back into the shadow of an overhanging building, wincing as the sharp _crack_ of bullets hitting concrete echoes just to her left. Super mutants might not be bright enough to understand the purpose of wide-brimmed hats—or, for that matter, putting a hand over their brow to see better—but they certainly are persistent. 

It doesn't matter that they can't see well enough to aim right now. They'll wait here for her until the sun goes down, if that's what it takes.

She's been learning a lot about how super mutants operate these past few weeks. It's… terrifying, she supposes, and fascinating too. Certainly more interesting than discussing the central themes of _Bleak House_ for the fourth year in a row, at least.

That's one thing she appreciates about the Wasteland—no essays to turn in, no tests to fill out. It's all practical exams here: pass or fail, do or die. And she's not ready to die just yet.

 _Which means you need to think_ , she scolds herself. It's all well and good to have a goal, but she's pretty sure most of the corpses she's passed (and, once she got over the squeamishness of those first few days out in the open, looted) weren't ready to die either.

The Lone Wanderer slings her assault rifle across her back, gives herself a moment to adjust to its now-familiar weight. She'd been taking potshots of her own earlier, hoping to land a lucky blow, but their hide is far tougher than her own and all she'd managed to do was piss them off more. Unlike a super mutant, she knows when a plan isn't working.

Time to change tactics.

She crouches low to the ground and carefully slides her way forward, trying to peer around the front of the building without making herself a target once more. At first, all she sees is chunks of concrete and thick sturdy boards, but another moment and a few steps further gives her exactly what she's looking for.

 _There_. A hole in the ancient building's wall where scavengers or raiders pried loose the boards from around what once was the door. It's a tiny thing, barely big enough for one nineteen-year-old to squeeze through, and she mouths a quiet thanks—to her father's god or to Atom or just to the air, she isn't sure—at the sight of it.

One deep breath, then another. The Lone Wanderer quietly pushes herself up from her crouch, eyes the distance once more—and lunges forward.

The mutants see her the moment she moves. One of them snarls in rage and then there are bullets thudding into the wall just behind her, but she is there, she is throwing herself against the gap between concrete and wood and pressing through and she is _inside_. 

Another round cracks against she side of the building. The Lone Wanderer cringes at the sound and shuffles away from the half-rotted wood covering the doorway before she allows herself to stop and take a breath. 

It's not a solution—the mutants will start prying the barricade apart with their bare hands if their prey goes missing for too long—but it is a start. The Lone Wanderer reaches over her back and grabs hold of her assault rifle once more; the grip and the weight are so different from the BB gun she grew up using, but the principle of the thing is still the same. Even back in the Vault, when there was nothing more than radroaches (and people, she supposes, remembering the way Jonas had stared at the ceiling and seen nothing at all) to be afraid of, she always felt safer with a gun in her hand.

She sets off through the building at a quick pace. Every noise has her twitching—if she were a feral, this is exactly the sort of place she'd want to hole up in—but all she finds are a couple of radroaches. Those she doesn't even bother shooting, not when a quick stomp on the back of the shell works just as well.

In a different situation, she might spend an hour or two here looting; even just walking through she grabs a stimpak, a few bottlecaps, and a half-full pack of cigarettes. There's a hundred other places that might hold something better, nooks and crannies and crumbling pieces of wall where some wastelander or strung-out raider might have decided to hide something valuable. No book or weapon is worth her life, though, and so she resists the temptation. 

The Lone Wanderer needs the higher ground, and she needs it _fast_. 

The first staircase she finds is a complete no-go, collpased so completely there's only a few dusty steps peeking out from underneath the mass of concrete and rebar and mildewed plaster. She snarls at the sight of it and whips open her Pip-Boy; there has to be another way up somewhere. If there's one thing she's learned about the pre-war world out here, it's that its architects _loved_ to show off. None of her home vault's bleak functionality shows in these cities: each jagged and broken building is the remnant of something immense and beautiful, built to show off to the people who walked among them.

It's not very practical, she knows. It's the vault-dwellers who survived, after all, the vault-dwellers who were spared the fire and the radiation and everything that came _after_.

(Still. If she ever had to pick, she knows which she finds more beautiful.)

After a moment's scrolling, she catches sight of a likely location on her Pip-Boy's radar—an open and empty spot on the map where she only remembers seeing a half-crumpled door. An elevator shaft, if she's not mistaken, and they're harder to climb than stairs but _harder_ doesn't mean _impossible_.

She sets off for the spot marked on her map. This time, she runs.

By the time she reaches the entrance to the elevator shaft, she can hear voices from outside. Deep and rumbling with that familiar undercurrent of anger and getting closer by the second: the super mutants have gotten bored of waiting for their prey to pop back out. The wood barricaded across the door groans with stress when one of the mutants presses their weight against it. It'll hold up against a serious assault for a moment or two, probably, but not much longer than that. She'll just have to hope they're the half-cautious sort, because she doesn't like her chances if they decide to push their way inside.

Almost without conscious thought, one hand goes towards her pack and the supplies inside. If things go very poorly, she has a few frag mines stored up, a single grenade, enough shots of Psycho and Med-X alike to drive her through the worst of the pain and the fear before it could really sink in—

 _No,_ she thinks. Her grip tightens on her weapon. It won't come to that. She won't let it come to that.

What's left of the metal doors is jagged and twisted, but there's a gap big enough for her to slide through if she sucks in her stomach and slides her pack through first. The inside is near pitch-black; she takes a moment to let her eyes adjust before giving up and flipping on her Pip-Boy light. Normally she prefers to keep it off—the bright glow is a beacon to all manner of beasts, _easy feast here_!—but right now sitting and waiting would be the stupider choice. The Lone Wanderer swings her arm and the light attached up and out, illuminating a swathe of the shaft stretching out above her. 

At first, she can't quite make sense of what she sees. Strange, hanging shapes sway above her, misshapen boards and dented metal wheels attached to ropes made of strips of cloth. When she finally manages to piece it together, though, the burst of relief that surges through her body is so strong she almost can't help letting out a shriek of joy.

It's a pulley system. Old and worn and dangerous, but still in one piece. Years and years ago, some group of raiders or traders or ghouls made this place theirs, and now their work is going to save her life.

She gives a quick, silent thanks to whoever created this before securing her assault rifle to her back and making her way to the pulley. No point in trying to use it properly—she can tell from a glance and a quick tug that the pulley itself is too rusted to move—but the ropes seem sturdy enough still. 

The Lone Wanderer yanks, putting all her weight into the tug. Nothing gives.

“All right,” she says. She gathers a fistful of rope in each hand, braces her feet against the wall, and starts to climb.

Metal creaks and groans as she makes her way upwards. Sweat beads on her arms, her shoulders, and she can _feel_ her body protesting the strain she's putting it under. Neither the rope nor her muscles give out on her, though, which is good.

(A year ago she wouldn't have even made it five feet up. Since leaving the Vault, she's developed muscles in places she didn't even know people could _have_ muscles. Occasionally she likes to entertain the thought of breaking back into the Vault just to show them off to Butch's stupid, scrawny ass.)

She doesn't even try to stop at the second floor. The metal door is shut tight and she can see scrapes and scorch marks where the building's previous occupants tried and failed to get it open. If she had a little more time and a few extra mines she could maybe try to blow it open herself, but well—explosives have never been her strong suit. There's an even chance she'd just set herself on fire trying. 

The third floor seems promising at first. The Lone Wanderer rests her feet on the ledge there as she peers in. The door is open even wider than the first floor, and she can see the opening of a hallway just beyond it. When she gives it a closer inspection with her Pip-Boy light, though, she realizes it won't work. The walls and ceiling have crumbled all around the door; the only thing accessible from the elevator shaft is a small, cramped cavern. It might have been someone's bedroom once upon a time—there's a pile of cloth on the floor that looks to be a makeshift bedroll and a few boxes full of odds and ends next to it. 

If nothing else, it's a safe little alcove. If she had more supplies and more patience, she could easily wait out the super mutants tucked away in this little corner. The Lone Wanderer is in short supply of both, though. 

She keeps climbing.

The fourth floor, finally, is exactly what she needs. The elevator doors are missing entirely, and the space where they used to be opens to a crumbling floor and a bright blue sky above. 

It's a relief to have her feet on solid ground once more. Climbing couldn't have taken more than a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity. Vault dwellers were never meant to be so far above the ground, especially with nothing underneath but solid concrete to catch them. She takes a moment to relax her cramped fingers and wipe her sweaty palms on her armor before she pulls her weapon back into her hands and takes a step forward.

Once, a long time ago, there was probably a bank of windows here. She can almost imagine some old-world businesspeople working here, looking longingly out at the river while sitting behind their desks. There's nothing left of the glass, though, and barely anything of the frames. It's is just one great big open drop to the ground below.

The Lone Wanderer smiles. It's exactly what she needs.

She drops into a crouch as she makes her way to the edge, testing each piece of crumbling concrete before she puts her weight on it. She flicks the safety off and peers over the edge.

Nothing. 

Well, nothing _living_ , anyway. Chunks of wood and concrete have been thrown across the dirt in front of the door. The super mutants must be pretty unhappy by now—some of the pieces look like they were thrown a good fifteen or twenty feet. She must have made it into the elevator shaft just in time.

Still, it's not a great sign. The super mutants are inside the building. They're not likely to wander out again any time soon, not with prey on their minds, and she's not about to go traipsing back down to the first floor to play lethal hide and seek with a pair of mindless brutes. She needs a way to draw them out, a sight or sound that'll catch their attention for sure—

The Lone Wanderer thinks back to the warped and dented door to the second floor, then runs a hand along the single grenade tied to her belt.

True, she doesn't have a lot of talent in the art of explosives. It hardly takes any skill at all to _drop_ something, though.

She pulls the grenade off her belt. One breath, two breaths, then three and she's pulling the pin and tossing the bomb off the side of the building. There's a soft _thump_ of metal-on-dirt as it hits the ground below, a moment of silence, and then—

The concrete shakes as the grenade explodes. A cloud of dirt and debris kicks into the air. The noise sends her heart leaping into her throat, for all that she was expecting it, and she clutches at the floor as if she might be thrown off.

Two more breaths and she's back in control. Her heart is still beating quickly, but now it's from adrenaline as much as wild fear. 

_Come on, you bastards_ , she thinks. They've been after her for hours now. It's long past time she stopped being prey.

She grabs her assault rifle off the floor and peers down the sights.,trains her eyes on the cloud of scorched debris that she knows marks the doorway.

It doesn't take long for the first flash of sickly yellow-green to show. She squeezes the trigger the moment the scarred dome of its head pops fully into view, and is rewarded with a choked-off scream of pain as her bullets hit the mark. The super mutant drops like a stone; dark red blood and chunks of something thicker splatter across the dirt.

The second comes out roaring, hunting rifle in his hands and a nailboard strapped to his back, furious and snarling at the sight and sound of his companion's death. 

For all they lack in intellect, their hunting instincts are keen. He stares at the body on the ground for only a moment before turning to glare up at her perch. 

“You!” he snarls. His voice rips through the air like a chainsaw. “You die!”

The words feel like they're coming in slow motion. The _world_ feels like it's coming in slow motion. Her lungs inflate, her eyes narrow, her finger curls around the trigger. 

_Not today_ , she thinks.

The head is her first thought, but no, it's too risky. A small target, a long distance, an unstable firing position. If she misses it'll be her life on the line. Instead, she turns her assault rifle just a touch lower; the first three bullets sink deep into his left wrist and arm.

The super mutant howls in pain, dropping his gun as he jumps backward to try and avoid the fire. A moment later he realizes his mistake and goes scrambling for the weapon, but it's too late, too late—her first shot goes wide, grazes his shoulder before slamming into the dirt, but the second (and the third and the fourth) hit true. Circles of blood bloom on his chest and neck, strange and sickly-looking against his odd skin.

He staggers. Sways. His head comes up to track her once more, and he snarls at her one last time before sinking to his knees and falling to the ground.

The Lone Wanderer sits there for several long seconds, watching through the sights of her rifle as his breaths come slower and slower. When they finally stop, she sets the gun aside.

Her hands are shaking a little.

It's not that—

It's not that she's never killed a super mutant before. But she's never been hunted down like this, never had to fight two-on-one against the massive brutes without so much as a friendly traveler to join the fray or a handy mini-nuke to do the heavy lifting. 

(But no, that's not true, is it? She has been hunted before. She fought, a whole Vault security team against one person, without even knowing why the people she grew up with suddenly wanted to see her dead.

That time she fled, nothing but a BB gun and the clothes on her back to her name. This time… this time she won.)

All of a sudden, she realizes she's laughing. It starts off slow and quiet, but before long she's doubled over and gasping for air. Part adrenaline, part triumph, part sheer relief at being alive—The Lone Wanderer barely knows what to do with all the emotions flooding her body.

 _I won_ , she thinks, giddy and disbelieving. _I won, I won, I won._

Only force of paranoid habit stops her from leaping up and shouting it over the crumbling rooftops. Most people are smart enough to run the other way at the sound of gunfire and roaring mutants, but there's no telling whether someone might still be lurking nearby. 

Instead, she takes a deep breath and smiles. She squirms a little closer to the edge of the building and lets her feet dangle off the ledge. Somehow, it doesn't seem quite so dangerous now—if dropping explosives didn't make the floor collapse, just sitting on it probably won't hurt anything. 

It's times like these she misses her dad the most. She wants to show him the afternoon sun over the river, tell him all about the things she's found and done out here, let him see how much better she's gotten at shooting now that she has more than radroaches and old tin cans to practice on.

(She wonders how much of what she tells him will come as a surprise, whether he'll even care at all. He lied to her about his past and her mother and probably dozens more things besides. He ran for the outside and left her behind. Moriarty and Three Dog and Doctor Li all talked to her about _James_ , and it was like… it was like hearing about a stranger. There's no knowing whether the man she remembers ever really existed at all.)

 _Soon_ , she tells herself. She grits her teeth and forces her mind away from those anxious, needle-sharp thoughts. 

He's still her father. Deep down in her heart, she knows (has to believe) that the past nineteen years weren't all a lie. She'll track him down and hug him—throttle him—and make him explain. She'll tell all her favorite stories about the stunts she's pulled since she made it into the wide-open wasteland, and he'll hold her tight and call her brave or stupid or both. 

He'll apologize, and then they'll… well, not go _back_ , certainly. The Lone Wanderer never wants to see that grim little prison again. These days, just exploring the abandoned Vaults she occasionally stumbles across tends to leave her dealing with with nightmares of Jonas bleeding and Amata crying and faces half-eaten by radroaches for days afterward. Her dad can stay in Rivet City, or in Megaton with her if he wants, and start back up on that strange old project of his. She'll keep working, keep exploring. There's a lot of the Capital Wasteland she hasn't seen yet.

It'll be okay. She just has to keep going.

The Lone Wanderer pulls her legs back in, then backs away from the edge and carefully stands up. Bits of dirt and plaster stick to her armor as she stands; she brushes them off as she takes stock of her weapon and supplies. No need to turn back, she decides; there's enough to get her to the next town marked on her Pip-Boy before dusk if she doesn't dawdle. The sooner she moves on, the sooner she'll be telling her dad all about the time she dropped two super mutant brutes from barely forty feet away.

Although… 

She eyes the bone-breaking four-story drop, then glances over her shoulder at the dark tunnel and the rough ropes she's going to have to climb all the way back down with. 

Maybe she won't tell him _every_ part of this story when she finally does find him. A little embellishment never hurt anyone, after all.

He owes her a lie or two.


End file.
